Case Summaries – Page 115 – Electronic Discovery Law

Forman v. Henkin, 134 A.D.3d 529 (N.Y. App. Div. 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where trial court in personal injury case ordered production of all photos of plaintiff privately posted on Facebook prior to the accident that plaintiff intended to introduce at trial, all photos of plaintiff privately posted after the accident not involving nudity or ?romantic encounters? and authorizations for defendant to obtain records showing each time plaintiff posted a private message after the accident and the number of words in each post, the appellate court vacated those portions of the order directing production of post-accident photos not intended to be introduced at trial and authorizations related to the private messages

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Social media contents, Facebook

Document Security Systems, Inc. v. Coupons.com, Inc., 2015 WL 1189661 (W.D.N.Y. Mar. 16, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Cost of converting native email and other native files into imaged format for purposes of production was one of many items considered by the court in defendant?s application for costs following grant of summary judgment. Despite plaintiffs argument that the requested expenses should only be approved if they pertain to documents actually produced to Plaintiff, court was satisfied with defendant?s explanation that the costs were ?actually and necessarily incurred in responding to the Plaintiff?s discovery demands? and allowed recovery of defendant?s tiffing costs, even though Defendant could not ?state with certainty whether every document that was converted was actually turned over to Plaintiff as being responsive to a particular demand.?

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: Imaged native files

Burnett v. Ford Motor Co., No. 3:13?cv?14207, 2015 WL 1650439 (S.D. W. Va. April 14, 2015); Burd v. Ford Motor Co., No. 3:13?cv?20976, 2015 WL 1650447 (S.D. W. Va. April 14, 2015); Johnson v. Ford Motor Co., No. 3:13?cv?06529, 2015 WL 1650428 (S.D. W. Va. April 14, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Inadvertently produced ESI

Nature of Case: Product Liability

Bagwe v. Sedgwick Claims Mgmt. Servs., Inc., No. 11 CV 2450, 2015 WL 351244 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 27, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Regarding the taxation of e-Discovery costs, court found that costs ?associated with the conversion of ESI into a readable format, such as scanning or otherwise converting a paper version to an electronic version or converting native files to TIFF files … are compensable under ? 1920(4). But costs related to the ?gathering, preserving, processing, searching, culling, and extracting of ESI simply do not amount to ?making copies? and are thus not taxable.?

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable e-Discovery Cost

U.S. Ethernet Innovations, LLC v. Acer, Inc., No. 4:10-CV-03724-CW (LB), 2015 WL 5187505 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 4, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Reasoning that ?[t]he inquiry about what electronic processes are taxable turns on whether they are part of making copies ?necessarily obtained for use in the case? or instead are solely for the convenience of counsel? the court indicated that it would award costs for load file preparation, but not for processing data

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable Costs

D.O.H. v. Lake Cent. Sch. Corp., No. 2:11?cv?430, 2015 WL 736419 (N.D. Ind. Feb. 20, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Finding plaintiff responsible for his prior counsel?s deficient Facebook production, saying he ?voluntarily chose his prior counsel and cannot avoid the consequences for his attorney?s discovery failures? and also responsible for his current counsel?s deficient Twitter production, district court granted Motion for Sanctions filed by defendants in part and ordered plaintiff to produce the entirety of his Twitter profile with redactions for privilege and relevance and to produce a log for any social networking information withheld and to pay the reasonable expenses and attorney?s fees associate with the discovery dispute.

Nature of Case: Civil Rights

Electronic Data Involved: Social media postings

Clientron Corp. Devon IT, Inc., —F. Supp. 3d—, No. 13-5634, 2015 WL 5093084 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 28, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: For Defendants? discovery violations, including failure to adequately search for responsive evidence, failure to designate a 30(b)(6) representative for deposition, and admitted deletion of emails despite a duty to preserve, the court found that sanctions were warranted and imposed serious sanctions, including monetary sanctions, exclusion of evidence, and ?enforcing the judgement of the Taiwanese court? against Defendant, where Defendant?s litigation misbehavior may have rendered Plaintiff unable to prove its contractual claim in court

Nature of Case: Breach of contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI, email

Truesdell v. Thomas No. 5:13-cv-552-Oc-10PRL, 2015 WL 2022991 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied Motion to Compel Production of Electronically Stored Data where plaintiff said that 1500 printed pages of defendant?s database usage history were inadequate under FRCP 34(e)(ii) because they were not easily searchable. Plaintiff sought to compel production of the electronic version of the data to include metadata, but the court said that the printed information was not as cumbersome as the plaintiff suggested because only a limited time period contained within the pages was relevant; the data did not originate from the defendant, so the defendant did not have the ability to manipulate the data to provide it only for the limited time period; and the plaintiff was unable to identify any information contained in the electronic version of the data that was not also contained in the printed pages.

Nature of Case: Privacy Rights

Electronic Data Involved: Database

United States v. GSD Media City, LLC, No. 14-11049, 2015 WL 7744578 (5th Cir. Dec. 1, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Appellate court found no abuse of discretion for award of conversion and character recognition costs where Defendant attested that the costs were necessarily incurred and did not request all costs related to electronic discovery and where the objecting party failed to itemize which costs it claimed were not permissible or provide an explanation of why they were not covered by the statute

Nature of Case: Qui tam; FCA (costs pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1920 (4))

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

United States v. Zaragoza-Moreira, 2015 WL 1219535 (C.A.9 (Cal.) Mar. 18, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court reversed and remanded case to the district court with directions to dismiss indictment in this criminal case after finding that Homeland Security Investigations agent acted in bad faith and in violation of defendant?s due process rights in failing to preserve video footage of defendant the agent knew to be of exculpatory value to the defendant, which the court found was established by a transcript of the agent?s interview with the defendant. The court also noted that the government?s failure to take action in response to a letter from defense counsel to the Assistant United States Attorney requesting preservation of the video tapes related to the defendant?s arrest or events leading to the arrest was ?particularly disturbing,? but declined to decide whether that failure also constituted bad faith given that they had already found bad faith on the part of the HSI agent.

Nature of Case: Criminal

Electronic Data Involved: Video footage

Catagory:Case Summaries